The Door Beneath
The entrance to the tunnels was in the old chapel, behind the altar of the forgotten gods. Rhaena had stood here before, on the night she fled the castle, on the night her father died, on the night her life changed forever. She had been a child then, small and frightened, clutching her mother’s hand.
Now she was a queen.
Now she was alone.
She pushed the altar aside.
The stone grated against the floor.
Behind it was a door.
Iron. Black. Sealed.
No handle. No lock. No keyhole.
Just the cold, smooth surface, waiting.
Theron stood behind her.
“The door will not open for me. I have tried. I have tried for twenty years.”
“Will it open for her?” Corin asked.
“I do not know.”
Rhaena placed her hand on the iron.
The metal was cold.
Colder than the winter. Colder than death.
The symbols on the surface stirred.
They were the same symbols she had seen in the hall of bones, in the temple of the forgotten gods, in her dreams. Eyes, mouths, hands. Words in a language that had not been spoken for a thousand years.
She could read them.
The queen kneels. The queen rises. The queen remembers.
She pushed.
The door swung open.
Beyond the door was darkness.
Not the darkness of the tunnels — a different darkness. Older. Colder. The darkness of a place that had not seen light in twenty years. The darkness of a tomb.
Rhaena stepped through.
Theron followed.
Corin followed.
The door closed behind them.
The stairs were steep, cut from the living rock, worn smooth by centuries of feet. The walls were close, pressing against her shoulders, her hips, her thighs. The ceiling was low, forcing her to stoop.
She counted her steps.
Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Eighty. One hundred.
The stairs ended.
The tunnel began.
It stretched before her, narrow and dark, its walls lined with bones.
Not the bones of animals — the bones of people. Skulls and ribs and femurs and phalanges, stacked in piles, arranged in patterns, watching her with empty eyes.
“The ones who tried to escape,” Theron said.
“The ones who got lost,” Corin said.
“The ones who were forgotten,” Rhaena said.
They walked.
The tunnel twisted and turned, branching left and right, up and down. Theron led without hesitation, his torch held high, his shadow long and strange on the bone walls.
“How do you know the way?” Corin asked.
“I do not know. I remember.”
“You remember?”
“The bones remember. They whisper. They guide. They warn.”
“What do they warn about?”
Theron was silent for a long moment.
“The Withering.”
The tunnel opened into a chamber.
It was vast — larger than the great hall, larger than the temple, larger than any room had a right to be. The ceiling was lost in shadow, the walls were lost in shadow, the floor was lost in shadow.
But there was light.
A single flame burned at the center of the chamber, pale and silver, casting long shadows on the stone.
And around the flame, a circle of figures.
Not people.
Shadows.
Shadows that had once been people.
The ones who had been forgotten.